Weekend Topic #1 (July 29-30) - Silent upgrades or what?

General Discvssions & Theory/Vnderstanding
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Let’s see how this goes, if successful I’ll try and make sure to do this every Friday so perhaps we can have a nice weekend discussion with overflow of activity to the earlier part of the week.

Weekend Topic: Some manufacturers have endless portfolio of products, sometimes with minor differences between each other. Some manufacturers change model names very rarely but perform upgrades and optimizations throughout its lifecycle. But then there’s a question of should these be silent upgrades or announced. And how to manage legacy owners and how much to charge them for an upgrade if at all.

A real life example - Antipodes released their 2023 upgrades for their streamers (K series and Oladra). Upgrades cost between $2000 to $6000 depending on how old your device is and what generation.
Some owners who just bought their streamer a few weeks ago are very pissed. Some who have relatively old ones felt the upgrade is within reason. Some of the Oladra owners are asked to pay $4000 for a better USB output and software upgrade. (A new one is now also $4K more than the previous generation cost). In comparison, if you have a K50 mk2, for $4000 they will upgrade the power supplies, USB output, firmware for both player and server, replace the upper panel and lower panel and install new upgraded feet from the Oladra series.

What do people think of silent and public upgrades? People potentially get better gear for the same cost. Others might have paid the same because no one knew this is coming.

Hope this is worthy of discussion!

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Really like this idea, and nice topic.

I think with silent upgrades to products where the mfg claim a noticeable improvement in sound quality for changes to an active product, such as antipodes, despite the same product name, I think that really deserves a different name. Either something like product v2, r2, g2, whatever you want to call it, something to differentiate the new upgrade so people actually know. Really with them they’ve embraced this now, but in the past it was really confusing figuring out what k50 I had, what changes they were making, and why the price increases (and they’re not the only ones who do this of course). I also think in those circumstances, mfg should offer the ability for customers who bought the older version of the product (from an authorized dealer or seller) within a specific timeframe the new one is released, like a few months perhaps, to get a free upgrade with them only paying cost of shipping. I do think there should be limits to that though but for the most part I think that would be a fair way to handle it, although I understand why some mfg can’t really afford to do that.

I understand that revisions can sometimes be unintentionally better (or worse) simply because of parts swaps and shortages, like if a mfg has to substitute a different transformer or caps, or perhaps has to use a bit different mfg techniques, or some other change that isn’t intended to really improve/upgrade the product and is more intended to be able to continue production. In those cases, I think it’s mostly fine if it’s not explicitly stated, but only as long as the mfg feels that it’s not a noticeably different product from their last. Of course this will absolutely cause some level of shift within the community surrounding the products going nuts over the revisions, but I think if the mfg aren’t making the changes to really change the sound, it’s fine if they don’t really note the changes outright

Personally for myself I only really care about anything that chances sonically rather than anything aesthetic or looks wise, but that’s just a me thing and I’m sure some people care about looks lol.

It is always weird to me to see some products basically being pretty noticeably changed or upgraded with the price point shifted up under the exact same name, sometimes not even having a solid way to identify different revisions. I don’t really think a lot of mfg do this stuff maliciously, either doing it out of necessary or for the sake of bettering their product, but really the problem just comes in how they’re labeled, marketed, and introduced. If the people making it feel like it’s an improvement over the old, I’d prefer they mark that in some easy to see way. If they don’t feel like it impacts much at all, I’m fine with it not really being directly marked as something different. I don’t want to see a million different versions simply because there’s something slightly different about the design, but I also don’t want to see noticeably different designed and sounding products under the same name without any clear indication that things have changed

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Arrrgggg :exploding_head: :triumph: :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:, this is a personal pet peeve of mine. Lampizator pulled the silent upgrade and then full fledged new model release on me EXACTLY one month after they shipped my Baltic 3.5 model DAC. I paid full price for my DAC, i specifically asked the dealer if there was anything new coming out and was told NO, and then bamm, a month after i get my DAC which had a silent revision on it, the “NEW’ Baltic 4 roles out and NO, I’m stuck in limbo because, this model has a slightly different sized chassis and I’m told don’t worry, even though you can’t upgrade it’s really the same thing but with a different engine because they couldn’t get the parts to build any more B3 models :rage: WTF man? You just devalued my DAC out the damned door and then tell me don’t worry it’s all good and your DAC sounds just as good but it’s not the same thing…:exploding_head: :fu:
Yep, BIG F. U. to some manufacturers at times. I hate it when that happens…lol when i think about it i get hot under the collar despite being 100% satisfied with my purchase otherwise. Yeah…I’m funny that way. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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Nick, you’re a nicer guy than I am. Wouldn’t have mattered how much I liked it. If that happened to me, I would have packed it back up, demanded a refund, and never done business with them again.

Revisions should always be announced. Unless you are just making a change to a screw supplier, there needs to be some communication that there was a change. And if there is a major change?

This is the kind of thing that needs announcement ahead of time. And not a few days. If I had bought a K50 a month before the 2023 updates, and suddenly I’m being told I have to send it back in and pay another several thousand dollars to get it updated, when a little communication would have had me just waiting a month to buy one? :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

Now, as for naming them, that really comes down to a case-by-case basis. I’m absolutely fine with not changing the name if all you do is change the chassis a little. As long as it doesn’t impact sound. Say, for example, if Hifiman decided to start producing a HE6SE with the HE400i headband. It probably warrants a v3 distinction, but I wouldn’t complain if they just called it the HE6SE, and marketed that it had a new headband. But if Schiit had tried to continue selling their chip based DACs without distinction after the AKM fire and they were forced to move to ESS chips? That’s not cool. They didn’t, obviously. Which is good. But that’s the kind of stuff that needs distinct naming.

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Good topic, here is a reality check and a contrarian question; Has anyone here besides @NickMimi been caught up in a silent revision?

As far as product announcements, I don’t have a problem with it being a surprise as I empathize with the fact which a pre-announcement would not do much other than setting the wrong expectations when the product is released. For example delays on release, or feature sets not available which were touted ahead of time.

I think of some recent Chord pre-announcements the last few years, especially the 2Go and 2Yu, which besides how you feel about them they were delayed quite a bit and were buggy as hell when finally released.

Would I rather have a product announced and ready to go over an early announcement? 9/10 times yes I would. If I happen to get burned on buying a product and its replacement is released within a month that would suck, and I would do what I could to exchange it for the newer model. Outside a month it is fair game, maybe I am naive I expect the next model to be an incremental change and who is to say it is better?

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Possibly? I’ve got no idea which model UltraRendu I have. Not something that bothers me, since I got mine used, but it also isn’t something that’s denoted on the unit itself. SGC could likely tell me if I contacted them, but like I said, didn’t buy it new so I’m not worried about it.

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Yeah, that brings up another point. If it is used and the seller does not make a mention of which version they are selling. Although in this case I am not familiar with how Sonore indicates which boards are used in their products.

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I was in the first batch of holo spring 3 buyers, and soon after they had to redesign the USB module to fix an issue with one of the sampling rates not being supported, when upsampling was used. It didn’t really affect me though so I wasn’t particularly bothered by it.

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M0N’s first paragraph and Nick’s sentiments reflect a lot of my thoughts.

Announce the new model is coming, in the interim put a discount on the current outgoing model. This way you can say hey, it may not be the latest and greatest but i saved a few bucks. For anything that is ordered or has waitlists, contact the buyer and tell them a new version is coming out and see if they want to wait for it or continue forward with the original order. Magne did this with the LRS → LRS+ revision. It isnt hard.

I also think if you buy something and it is within the trial period (and maybe a little more leeway depending on the period length) and something new comes out then the mfg should work with you. When I bought my X i asked about the SE a few times, i was told there were no demo SEs and no discounts coming. A day or two after the 45 day trial ended Ben posted some demo X SE units, i asked about it and he said “nope, sorry after the 45 days its considered used and its no longer a trial return and your value drops off significantly”.

As for revision naming, quit the silent revision shit for things they say make differences. Colors, headbands, screws, finishes, knob orientation, etc dont matter. But on the K50 they kept the name but you tell the difference by looking at the back I/O and the inputs are different. K50.01, K50 rev. 1.0 whatever. Denote it, it doesnt need to be it’s official name but on the spec sheet note previous and the current revision. PC motherboards do this often, a rev 1.0 may be the initial but a 1.2 may have a small new feature, add-on, but it shows it’s the same base with a slight difference.

Lampi and antipodes pull this shit often, and even worse, they may do custom one offs or upgrades that arent documented and as a buyer youre left in the dark.

On the flip side, you have things like dana cable, who abruptly discontinued the Ultra, announced a new cable that uses the same cable construction, but they built it in a fisherman’s sweater weave amd upped the price by near $400. It seems anti-consumer.

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My LTA UL + was silently changed from WBT speaker connectors to Cardas, I liked the look of the WBT better, but Ces’t la vie and the Cardas have a hex nut which honestly is the ideal for me being able to reach back there with an 11mm wrench to tighten and loosen them every time I changed a speaker cable (which I did A LOT over the course of a month or so).

I really can’t add more than what’s already been said on the topic here and interestingly enough I don’t find myself having strong opinions one way or another. However, my assumption would be that if I am buying new directly from a vendor that I will always get the latest and greatest, whether the revisions were for performance, software updates or functionality or longevity improvements. I’d be pissed if a manufacturer sent me something less than their latest rev.

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To be fair to Lukas, the Lampizator man himself, i reached out and had a polite WTF exchange with him. Covid shortages of parts had him in a bind and he had to come up w/ a new engine for his DAC’s that he could actually get parts for. He built the last few Baltic 3 DAC’s and others, made a few small changes/upgrades/additions that he was implementing in the B4 version to the extent possible, thus the silent B3.5 to maximize his inventory use and sales. I was understanding and he would have taken a relatively if not even, fair exchange if i sent my DAC back to Poland, waited and paid $$ towards a B4.

The absolute truth is I did NOT want the newer engine after our exchange, I was pretty happy in knowing I had the most maxed out B3 he was capable of producing, and in full disclosure my finances at the time were maxed out. He was not offering an even exchange because that would have been a cash loss to him, (shipping costs etc) and his explanation of what he did, why, and effort he put into maximizing the last versions of each DAC going out before his full announcement of a revision sat well enough with me that i took my monetary loss, albeit somewhat begrudgingly, (because i wanted a damned discount off my own purchase knowing full well the V4 version would cause my own piece to drop in re-sell value immediately).

I am not an excessive flipper of components, I actually research the larger purchases and base my desires on my current “needs” and some of my future expansion plans. This is an extremely finicky hobby, so much so that i go out of my way to avoid some experiences simply because a good bit of ignorance can be bliss to me :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: and my wallet. My B3 purchase was a conscious well thought out decision between it and the Golden Atlantic TRP, future tube rolling choice won out based upon extensive research of both pieces as they were available at the time and my personal preferences.

The engine revision was an unknown that i did not care to stomach after making the choice to expend a large sum of funds and i wasn’t gonna spend a dollar more. The US dealer had already discounted tubes and an FTA Callisto cable for me in the exchange and offered me a very fair, above standard used market exchange, for my own Atlantic 3. He was done with me. Return shipping to Poland for my exchange was smooth and paid for by Lampi, note please, this is NOT common practice for every manufacturer and is costly. A paid exchange would have taken time i was not willing to further wait, and in order to keep my own B3 pristine would have required me to be without a DAC for longer than i cared for after an already months long wait.

In case we ever grow much larger than where we stand currently, and this post goes public, i want to be on record stating that my dealings with both Lampizator proper in Poland and their US distributor were very fair, IMO honest based on standard market practices, and overall a pleasant, albeit costly affair with some emotional turmoil thrown in if for nothing else to make for a good story and yet another growth learning experience and wisdom :astonished: :grimacing: :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Interesting topic and experiences so far. On the topic of software upgrades, I feel like unless you sell the software component separately, I would consider them to be firmware upgrades and part of regular maintenance that should be standard support and not charge extra for them. If however there is a new product with a different version of software which is backwards compatible and the user wants their old hardware to be upgraded, I would think a good model would be to offer that for a small fee perhaps.

For hardware upgrades, I kinda like the Schiit approach where if you make things modular from ground up, you can make newer upgraded components and sell them to customers if they wish to upgrade. This could be done by the consumer (preferably) or sent in.

I had an interesting exchange with Zach (or someone from ZMF support) when I asked about when they might release a stabilized run of Auteurs a few weeks before they announced Atriums. They didn’t mention Atriums but they did say that I should wait and they have interesting things coming out soon. I took that as a hint for some cool wood options so decided to wait in the used market as well and then boom they announced Atrium which I bought on release day.

Now I know manufacturers can’t announce products before release day which causes issues like people buying older models leading right up to the release but there are definitely ways that companies can handle that and I feel some of the boutique ones do it better, likely due to their size which is why I usually like to deal with such builders. I have recently started working with a dealer which has also been quite a good experience so far.

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Reasonable cost for a software upgrade :thinking:, yes I agree and unfortunately reasonable seems to be relative to the market value of the newest product…:stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: I had to spend $639 to update the PCM and MQA abilities of my Berkeley DAC. I am completely satisfied with the results and did not scoff too much at the cost, I also did not sit on the chance to do so too long hemming and hawing about the cost because I knew full well since the manufacturer was no longer going to offer hardware updates to my particular model I had better jump on the software update in case they decided to stop offering those too. It’s a damned expensive hobby…with nasty depreciation, finicky users and all completely subjective to each person’s individual tastes and preferences. :cold_face:

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You guys narrowed down the topic pretty well id say

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